A Celebration of Utter Utility: The Robertson Screwdriver

The Canadians have French, Celine Dion, and hockey. They also have the best screwdriver you've never heard of.

Canadians will be celebrating an important anniversary this year, and like most of our anniversaries, we'll be celebrating it largely alone. A century ago, a traveling salesman named Peter L. Robertson invented a new kind of screwdriver -- and its companion screw -- so prompted after he sliced himself silly with a flathead. Today, his namesake No. 2 remains the Canadian handyman's standard: A square head with a point, it is a design so simple and perfect that your eschewing it bewilders us. The Robertson never slips, and it never strips, and it can be driven one-handed with nary a wobble. And while there are pockets of reported Robertson activity in Florida, Texas, and Indiana, thanks mostly to the freethinking folks in the RV industry, you're probably missing it from your toolbox, and that's an even greater national tragedy than your ugly money. In a recent ranking of great Canadian inventions, the Robertson ranked seventh, ahead of the zipper and the retractable beer-carton handle, just one spot behind the pacemaker. But the Robertson is the real lifesaver, rescuing us from both flatheads and Henry M. Phillips's vastly inferior product. That sham artist actually had the nerve to suggest that his screwdrivers were designed to slip, to prevent "over-tightening." Up here, there's no such word.

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